


And I love every inch of you (And then some, and then some)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Banter, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Hawaii Is A Very Sunny Place, Love at First Sight, M/M, Nahele and Grace and Charlie and Eddie are very present in the background, Schmoop, everyone is happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 13:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18470227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: “Do you believe in love at first sight?”Danny sighs a little for the lost possibility of a nap, but doesn’t bother lifting his head or opening his eyes. Steve is to his left, in the other chair, and Danny doesn’t need his sense of sight to confirm that. “What brought this on?”Or: A slice of an afternoon in their own backyard where the sunlight touches everything, both literally and metaphorically.





	And I love every inch of you (And then some, and then some)

**Author's Note:**

> Amid many, many unfinished things, I felt an itch to just finish _something_ , so what does one do? One starts yet another new fic. On the other hand, seeing as you’re reading this right now with your own eyeballs (or text to speech technology, perhaps), I do seem to have been successful in my endeavor to finish a thing! This is a really short little fic with fluff levels that reach the danger zone – be prepared. ☀
> 
> The title is from _And then some_ , a song by Arkells.

The sun is warm on his skin, the kids are laughing in the distance and life is good in general. Danny is just about to slip into a nice slumber – a bad idea, as he knows from painful, lobster red experience, but the afternoon light has an undeniable pull on him and it seems so harmless now – when Steve’s voice pierces his bubble of sleepiness.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?”

Danny sighs a little for the lost possibility of a nap, but doesn’t bother lifting his head or opening his eyes. Steve is to his left, in the other chair, and Danny doesn’t need his sense of sight to confirm that. “What brought this on?”

He would bet a month’s salary that Steve shrugs. “Just thinking.”

“Why?”

“Believe it or not, it’s a thing I do sometimes.”

Before he can decide against it, he has one eye open and is rolling his head around to look at Steve. Argh. Foiled again. 

Steve is watching the ocean, where Nahele, Grace and Charlie are tossing a rainbow-colored beach ball around. Eddie splashes through the water, chasing the ball from one human to the other and back again. Every now and then he manages to bump the target with his nose, but he never tries to bite into it, and his pink tongue is lolling so far out of his mouth that it looks like there is no way the full length of it could ever fit back in. 

Steve is smiling faintly, but Danny can’t decide if it’s at the display or due to a somewhat more sinister satisfaction at having annoyed Danny into looking over. Could go either way; Danny’s best guess would be that it’s a bit of both.

“I _know_ you’re in possession of a working brain, Steven,” he tells the side of Steve’s head.

Steve’s smile widens, which is an obvious tell that there’s definitely a little of that sinister satisfaction thing going on. “Thanks,” Steve says seriously.

“What I _meant_ to ask is why you’re choosing this moment to contemplate love at first sight. Not very pertinent to our situation, is it?”

He watches as Steve, unerringly and without looking, rubs his right thumb over the band on his left ring finger. Steve’s smile grows a little further still, and when he glances over at Danny, it’s written plain in his eyes that again he knows damn well what he’s doing to Danny. “Not right now, no.”

Danny presses the tip of his left thumb to the side of his own ring out of pure force of habit. It’s like watching someone yawn and having an irrepressible animal reflex to do the same, except no yawn has ever made him feel like golden sunlight is seeping right through his skin and pooling in the left side of his chest. 

He’s distracted enough by his own happiness – imagine that, past Danny – that it takes him a second to realize what Steve is getting at. His mother always said he was a fool in love. “Not _now_? What’s that mean?” 

“Well, we’re a little past our first meeting,” Steve points out, in a tone like he’s being reasonable, instead of continuing his charade of misunderstanding Danny deliberately.

“Steve. I had my _gun_ pointed at you. This is a very concerning statement you’re making.”

“You were doing your job,” Steve reasons. “I like competent people.”

As if Danny doesn’t know that. Danny has years of first-hand experience with things Steve likes. 

He also has years of experience at calling Steve out on his bullshit, though he’d like to think he was a natural at that right from the start. “Explaining it away as a competency kink would be letting you off easy. You, love of my inexplicable life, have a hard-on for danger.”

“You’re not that dangerous to me, Danny.”

“Really? I almost knocked you out the day we met.”

Steve chews on that for a moment, his competitive, prideful side seemingly waging a war with the side that wants to continue the conversation he started. “You definitely bowled me over,” he settles on, which is a nice if somewhat pathetic attempt at compromise and makes Danny laugh. Steve seems pleased with that outcome, but then he brings them back on track. “So I take it you don’t believe in love at first sight?”

Danny looks at Steve, taking in the strong lines of his bare calves, the smattering of hair on his thighs until they disappear under his shorts, the tats that adorn his biceps and the way the ratty tank top he’s wearing leaves little about the definition of his chest to the imagination. Steve responds to the scrutiny by welcoming it with open arms and preening, shifting his totally normal, relaxed sitting position into a confident sprawl by leaning back and letting his legs fall open further. His eyes aren’t full-on bedroom yet, but they’re definitely hovering in the door opening.

Danny mentally congratulates himself, as he does at least weekly, on putting a ring on all that. “I believe in lust at first sight, certainly.”

“Yeah,” Steve drawls, grin a touch wolfish, “having some haole cop yell at me in my own garage, that really gets me going.”

“Your life choices don’t contradict that nearly as much as you seem to think they do, babe.”

Steve looks at him in a way that makes Danny think he’s considering a scowl, but he’s letting it go because it would take more effort than he’s willing to invest in looking displeased at the moment. It’s a feeling Danny knows well, having struggled with it himself in the past on occasions too numerous to count.

He throws Steve a bone. “So do you believe in it? This whole _coup de foudre_ thing?”

“Not until I met you.”

It’s pretty much exactly what Danny expected him to say, but expecting something and being prepared for it continue to be two very different things when it comes to Steve McGarrett. “Jesus,” Danny says, fighting for words. “You’re ridiculous.” 

Steve grins at him then, and there’s no deliberate seduction or wryness layered over top this time. It’s a full-on, full force, blinding Steve grin, coming out to play because Steve is happy, too.

Danny grins back, which is another one of those Steve-related reflexes he knows he’ll never be able to break, long as he lives.

Their attention is drawn away from each other when Charlie comes sprinting up to them over the small stroke of beach, screeching to a stop right in front of them, nicely centered between their chairs. “Nahele says the sun says it’s time for pizza,” Charlie announces.

Danny isn’t wearing a watch and his phone is inside on the coffee table, where he left it, so he has no way of verifying Nahele’s claim that dinnertime is upon them. Steve is no help, because he’s still grinning, but now at Charlie’s completely sand-coated chicken legs. “Go dry off first,” Danny says, even though on most levels he’s already made his peace with the fact that after a day like this, trying to keep the floors from turning into an inside beach is a hopeless task.

“I put towels by the door for you, buddy,” Steve interjects, proving he’s not completely useless.

“Okay,” Charlie promises impatiently. “Then pizza? Please?”

Nahele and Grace are advancing now behind Charlie, both clearly listening in. Grace is carrying their ball under one arm. 

“Yes.” Danny basks in the image of all three of the faces in front of him lighting up simultaneously. “Let Grace or Nahele make the call. You guys know the order – no ‘accidentally’ adding garlic knots this time, you hear me?”

He gets three synchronized yesses, followed by an uncoordinated clash of dad, Danno and Danny. The kids have already filtered past their chairs when Steve cranes his neck and calls after them, “Don’t forget Danno’s extra pineapple.”

“They’re not getting me any pineapple,” Danny says, to Steve alone.

“They’re not getting you any pineapple,” Steve admits easily. They both know their children are smarter than that – the kids have hopes for more pizza in the future, which they would put at severe risk if they let Steve entice them into fruit-on-Danny’s-pie pranks.

Eddie pads over and plops down on top of Danny’s feet, with no regard for how his wet fur will feel against Danny’s dry, sun-warmed skin. Danny wiggles his toes, but Eddie just stretches out and pants, so Danny doesn’t have the heart to shoo him away.

There’s laughter in Steve’s voice. “You’re whipped.”

“Says you.”

“Says I,” Steve confirms, like that would have been a ‘duh’ if they hadn’t been training it out of their own vocabulary to prevent Charlie from picking it up.

“Are you going to keep repeating whatever I say?”

“As long as you keep saying things that bear repeating, sure.”

That’s a challenge if Danny has ever heard one. There are many things fighting for first place on the tip of his tongue. _Steve McGarrett is an idiot_ is probably one of the strongest contenders, just to be that perfect blend of smartass and total asshole about it, but what comes out is something different – something, like Steve dared him, that bears repeating. “You make me really happy.”

Steve evidently did not see that coming, which is a better reaction than even the wittiest comment could have gotten. There’s too much space between their chairs to do more than awkwardly touch hands and lower arms, and moving over would start something they wouldn’t be able to finish before the kids come bouncing back out of the house asking for money, but Steve still leans in, just because, like he’s being pulled forward and can’t help himself. “Me too,” he sighs, that grin of his firmly back in place, like it’s yet another stray that he adopted for life because it happened to wander by.

And looking at him, Danny may still not believe in love at first sight – it’s a fairy tale concept, a romantic fantasy – but he believes in feelings that build, and develop, and somehow don’t stop growing. That’s real, because it’s right there in Steve’s eyes and body language and words, almost tangible in the air between them. It’s love over and over and over again, at hundredth sight, and thousandth, and hopefully ten thousandth, if he allows himself to be uncharacteristically optimistic for a moment.

He likes that a lot better, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! I hope your day includes pizza or something else that gets you as excited as Charlie, because you deserve it. Consider leaving a comment if you're able to! 💖
> 
> I'm on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


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